The present invention relates to a word search apparatus, a word search method, and a recording medium, which are used for a personal computer (henceforth referred to as PC) having a coordinate input means, such as a pen type tablet, a mouse, or the like, and search for a desired word from a words dictionary to be a searched target using a handwritten character written by a handwriting input, a mouse input, or the like as a search key.
A word search apparatus for searching for a word using a handwritten character as a search key is used for a PC having a coordinate input means, such as a pen type tablet, a mouse, or the like. A conventional word search apparatus using a handwritten character as a search key, by acquiring coordinate values of handwritten data of a character that a user has written, and comparing the acquired coordinate values of the handwritten data with a standard character pattern that is stored in a character recognition dictionary, recognizes the character. It then searches for a desired word based on a result of the recognized character to thereby display a search result on a display unit (refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-259218).
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an example of a conventional handwritten word search, where portions surrounded by the doublet show represent examples of a search result searched based on the character recognition result. In the example of FIG. 1, the character recognition result is displayed not as  which the user recognizes to be right but as  in which the second character is not correct. The user, by using means for correcting an error, can correct the second character to  to thereby obtain a word list including the desired word as the search result.
The means for correcting the error is not limited thereto in particular, but for example, while candidate characters (string) of the character recognition result are listed in a table, the user, by pointing out the incorrect character with a pen type tablet, a mouse, or the like, selects a desired character (string) among the candidate characters (strings) listed in the table to thereby correct the error.
In some word search apparatus for searching for a word by using a handwritten character as a search key, not the method of correcting the incorrect character as described above, but a method of searching for a word using a search key including a recognition candidate character is also employed. In this case, if there is a character matching with a recognition candidate character whose priority level is a second level or lower, it is considered that it matches with the search key, and a corresponding word is searched. Meanwhile, even when there is no character that the user desires, in the recognition candidate character, there is also a method of employing, when a character other than that is found, it as a candidate of a word search (refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 8-305722).